Member-only story
The Flower Eater
Beauty is both fair and cruel.
In a village removed from the ways of courtly life, Henna might not have known anything about pretty dresses and painted smiles if Princess Paya’s retinue had not passed through the dusty streets one late afternoon.
The princess wore a red shroud that concealed her face through the carriage’s window, but her dainty hand — adorned with gold rings affixed with gleaming gems — waved to the crowd gathered for her. Henna had never seen such lovely things in her life. Even the princess’s skin, the color of sifted sand, made Henna wish her own skin were a few shades darker.
“If only I could see her face,” Henna thought — but no one other than the royal family would ever see Paya without her veils.
But the mysterious quality to the princess made Henna all the more intrigued — so much so that she asked her father if she could try to become a handmaiden at court.
It was only after her mother’s death — and her father’s subsequent dalliance with despondency — that he allowed Henna to go to court. The day she left, he could barely look at her because of the resemblance she bore to her departed mother.
The first trial to become one of the princess’s handmaidens involved poison tasting — and two candidates choked on their own blood the first day…
